Chapter Text
When your eyes open, they open slowly. You struggle to surface against the weight of whatever you’ve been drugged with. It feels as though a fog has settled around and over you – it creates a seal around your lungs so you can’t breathe, forces your eyes shut, like a lead blanket.
Finally you feel a small leak of clean, fresh air break its way into your lungs. You fight to open your eyes, look down and around. You’re sitting- wrists and ankles bound by zip ties to the chair you’ve been placed in. The chair is bolted to the floor –you can’t move an inch. You’re facing a wall made of glass, looking into a much smaller room, with another steel chair waiting in the middle. You turn your head as far as you can, feeling the soreness in your neck as you force it up from your chest.
You’re in a warehouse of some kind- it’s big, lit by flickering fluorescent bulbs. The space is littered with work tables, computer consoles, small groups of conferring men and women in lab coats. There are people all over the place, but everyone hurries past you as if you’re not there. You turn to the other side- nothing there but a medical tray. There’s something on it, but it’s covered. Your heartbeat trips.
As adrenaline floods you, the final fog from the drugs lifts from your body. You can open your eyes fully, feel your muscles, bound though they are, flex at your command. You seem uninjured- whole, but restrained. You take a few deep breaths to stay calm. The GPS device in your watch has surely been activated- your sister and your team must be on their way.
“Agent Danvers. Pleased to see you’ve finally joined us,” a voice lilts at you. You turn to your right, slowly. You’re not going to panic, or let this woman, this foul woman who has tried to take everything away from you, know that you might be scared.
Lillian Luthor stands there, smug, with her hands on her hips. She smiles at you, showing her teeth. You grimace at her, flex your hands to keep your calm.
“Where is my father?” You ask. “What have you done with him this time?” The words growl out of your throat.
Lillian laughs out loud at that. You grit your teeth and your hands knot up in fists.
“Agent Danvers, you know by now that I haven’t done anything to your father. You know he worked with us willingly. Until you walked into our facility, he was second in command only to me. As for now… he’s not really your concern. I think you’ll find that there are more immediate problems you’re going to need to deal with.”
You grip the arms of the chair and force yourself to calm down.
“So- what? What information do you think you’re going to torture out of me?” You spit at her. “I’ll never tell you anything about the DEO or Supergirl, and you seem to already know it all anyway. What do you want?”
You try to keep her talking. Kara has to be on her way.
She smiles at you again, and shakes her head. “You underestimate my depth of feeling, Agent Danvers. This isn’t a lark for me- it’s my life’s mission. You singlehandedly wrecked a plan that we had been working on for months. You turned Jeremiah against me after almost ten years of good work.
“I have no interest in trying to torture information out of you. Like you said – I know it all already. And you’ll know when we strike next.“
“So what,” you growl out, punctuating each word, “Do you want?”
She turns her head, looking into the glass encased room with the steel chair in the middle. She makes a small gesture with her right hand – in fact she barely moves it. And then a door opens, and a man walks in to the room, with a body draped over his shoulder.
You see dark hair, a leather jacket. The shine of a gold badge. Your heart clenches, painfully hard, as you feel the breath knocked from your body. Your grip on the arms of the chair tightens until your knuckles are white.
The man drops Maggie into the chair, quickly zip tying her ankles and wrists, until they’re a mirror of yours. Her head lolls against her chest, but you can see blood on her face.
“What I want, Agent Danvers,” you hear from your right, without looking up, without looking away, “Is to cause you pain. As much pain as humanly possible.”
You hardly hear the click of her heels against the floor as she walks away. You can’t take your eyes off Maggie. You can’t breathe – your heart is beating too hard in your chest and you can feel every single thump as though they’re being beaten into you. You’ve been left alone now – there is no need to stand guard over a woman whose whole body, whole being is focused on someone else.
You’re not a flight risk anymore. Not without her.
The man in the room – he’s not even masked, they don’t care if you see his face, commit every part of him to memory as a target for your rage - dumps a bucket of ice water over Maggie’s head. You flinch with her as she wakes. The glass is mostly soundproof – you can’t hear her gasp but you feel it as though she were right next to you.
She struggles for a second, then feels the zip ties holding her to the chair. And then she looks up. And her eyes land on you. There are already tears in your eyes- you can feel them, you try to swallow them back but they refuse to disappear.
You see her try to talk to you. Her lips – you kissed those lips this morning, smiled into them as you woke up – form your name. You struggle again against your bonds. It’s no use, and you know it.
You scream for her. Your throat feels like it’s being ripped into shreds but you shriek her name, over and over again, she has to hear you, has to know you’re coming and you’ll save her. You’ll find a way. You can taste your own tears in your open mouth as you roar her name.
She’s shaking her head at you, her eyes soft while they bore into you. “I’m okay,” you make out. “It’s okay.” You stop yelling, look at her with those damn tears rolling down your face. She repeats herself – it’s okay, baby, don’t struggle, Alex please, please don’t give them a reason to hurt you – and you stare into her eyes. You will never forget her face like this.
The man knocks on the glass to get your attention. He draws your eyes away from Maggie to the taser he has in his hands. He toys with it, toys with her, as he brushes it past her hair, just close enough for her to hear the sizzle but not enough to shock. She flinches away but keeps her expression stoic. She keeps her eyes open the whole time.
She can barely move her hands, but she flexes just enough to flip her palm up towards you. She’s reaching, struggling against her ties, yearning for you with her fingertips, when he jabs the taser into her side.
Her fingers clench into a fist, she shudders violently and her eyes roll, but she doesn’t yell out.
He takes the taser away, only to reapply it directly to her neck. He has to brush her hair out of the way to do it. You feel her hair against your fingertips as if it were you.
This time her teeth snap together, you can see her jaw clench and the muscle working. She turns away from you now, so you can’t see her eyes. You won’t look away. You watch every second. You see her writhe as he shocks her over and over. She won’t look at you. You know she’s doing it to spare you the pain, you know it deep in your bones and in your lungs even while you feel like you’re breaking apart, but it feels to you like a condemnation.
Finally he gives up on the taser. Maggie hasn’t yelled out, not once, and although you are wrecked, you can clearly see him decide that it isn’t enough. He takes the taser with him as he leaves the room.
Maggie looks up, finally. She’s panting, her hands clenched, but she looks up at you and tears spill down her face. She shakes her head at you.
It’s not your fault. She doesn’t have to form the words for you to hear it in her voice.
You blink and more tears roll down your face. Your vision blurs but you can see her, always see her, and you shake your head wordlessly. Even if she could hear you, there are no words for this.
When the goon comes back, all he has with him is a knife and a towel, but he sets them on the floor by the door. He advances towards Maggie, eyes on you, and he looks at you through the glass as he drives the first punch into her stomach.
She doubles over in her chair, and he throws another punch into her temple. Her chair isn’t bolted to the floor- his hit knocked it over and she slams into the ground. He kicks her once, in the side, before he picks her up and rights her chair.
You’re screaming again – you didn’t even realize. You’re out of your mind, you’re sobbing, you can’t breathe, you would rather die than this, as he hits her again and again. She’s bleeding everywhere but he hasn’t knocked her out. You can hear her grunt as he hits her, but she still won’t scream. When he pauses to catch his breath, she spits blood and red spots cloud your vision.
You force yourself to stay awake, to stay present- you need to stay there with her. You need to suffer too.
The man throws punch after punch until he tires, and then he grabs the knife. He paces towards Maggie, dancing the tip of the blade over the backs of her hands. He gives her shallow cuts- deep enough to scar but not enough to kill – on the back of her neck, on her fingers. It’s not until he plunges the knife into her thigh that she screams for the first time. He pulls the knife out of her leg and presses the towel into the wound. He wraps it around her leg so tight she screams again, and you have to fight again to keep from passing out.
He’s just lining up another shot when he looks up. You look around as the warehouse is suddenly bathed in red light, and a warning klaxon echoes around you. Maggie’s head is against her chest now – she’s looking down and you can barely make out her shoulders rising and falling with each breath. Her breathing is shallow, and you can hardly breathe at all.
The look on the goon’s face has become one of fear. He looks at you in the eyes, then turns and runs out of the room, while the warning sirens continue to sound. Then you hear a rush of wind behind you.
Kara blasts through the warehouse doors with J’onn by her side and a team of DEO agents at her back. She flies to you, cuts you free, but she doesn’t see Maggie. You don’t see anything else.
“Alex, Alex look at me, are you hurt? What happened?” She holds you at arm’s length and scans your body for injury, but you’re fighting to get away. You pull out of her grasp and run to the glass wall. You slam your fists against it, as you hear Kara’s intake of breath.
Strong arms pull you away from the window, holding you tight around the waist as you fight, writhing against them, screaming again, and you see red light explode from Kara’s eyes to the window.
The glass heats and shatters, and you’re finally free, free to sprint to Maggie’s side. A DEO agent comes up behind you and cuts her ties, before he follows Kara and J’onn to search the rest of the facility. She falls into your arms as you kneel in front of her.
You slide onto your knees, rest her head on your thighs, grab one of her hands and put pressure on her leg with the other. Her eyes open. You think it happens slowly, but everything seems to be in slow motion now. You keep one hand on her thigh but raise the other to her face. You barely touch her, barely graze your fingertips over her cut lip, the split in her eyebrow, the knife marks left on her collarbones, and your tears fall freely, landing on Maggie’s face and chest.
“I’ve got you,” you whisper to her over and over. “I’m so sorry. I’ve got you, you’re going to be fine.”
You think it’s impossible, but she reaches up to brush away one of your tears before she passes out. You hold her tighter and scream for Kara. You don’t know how you still have air left in your body to scream.
You sob over her body, keeping pressure on her wound, until Kara bursts through the door in the side of the room. She kneels by your side, and takes Maggie into her arms. She has to fight you because you’re consumed with fear and pain and can’t force yourself to let go.
Kara pulls her away gently. She opens her mouth and says something but you can’t hear at all. Then she turns and says something else to J’onn, who’s beside you in his Martian Manhunter uniform. Kara lifts into the air, Maggie hanging limply in her arms, and flies away at top speed.
And finally, finally you collapse to your knees, sobbing again, breathless.